Highlights of Powell's Presentation

The Associated Press

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Highlights of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation of evidence Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council:

INTERCEPTED CALLS:

A telephone call Powell said was between two Iraqi military officers was intercepted last Nov. 26, one day before the resumption of U.N. inspections. "We evacuated everything," one of the officers said. In another call, on Jan. 30, an officer was overheard saying, "We sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there."

In another call, one Iraqi commander instructs another to remove any reference to "nerve agents wherever it comes up."

Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show Iraqi-front companies tried to buy machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, Powell said.

INFORMANTS:

Powell quoted intelligence sources as saying that shortly before the U.N. agreed to send weapons inspectors to Iraq, a missile brigade was hiding rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads were hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

The sources have said weapons inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives, with Iraq trying to tap all voice and electronic communications.

According to Powell, sources also said Saddam Hussein has tried to prevent interviews with Iraqi scientists and in early December Saddam warned all Iraqi scientists that they and their families would face serious consequences if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death.

Other Iraqi informants, including a former major, a former chemical engineer and a civil engineer, said the country has at least seven mobile biological weapons laboratories mounted on at least 18 road trailers and railroad cars, Powell said. These facilities can produce enough dry biological agent in one month _ including anthrax and botulinum toxin _ to kill thousands.

According to Powell's presentation, another source said Saddam's regime has been experimenting on human beings, including 1,600 death row prisoners, to perfect its biological and chemical weapons.

Defectors also told U.S. officials, according to the presentation:

_Saddam spent billions of dollars in the 1990s on a clandestine nuclear weapons program that tried to develop techniques to enrich uranium.

_Iraq retains a covert force of a few dozen Scud missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers, in violation of U.N restrictions.

SATELLITE PHOTOS:

Satellite images show a facility that housed four active chemical weapons munitions bunkers until just before U.N. weapons inspectors arrive on Dec. 22, Powell said. In one photo he showed, the bunkers are surrounded by security forces, decontamination vehicles and special equipment to monitor leakage. A second photo of the same facility, taken later, shows the bunkers cleaned out and "sanitized" with the decontamination vehicles and supporting equipment gone.

Satellite photos also show Iraq trying to conceal missile stocks, Powell said. One image, identified as a ballistic missile facility, shows five large cargo trucks and a truck-mounted crane moving missiles two days before inspections began. Powell said satellite images show the same routine at nearly 30 sites.

Other satellite pictures show a training camp in northeast Iraq established by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden who was granted safe haven in Iraq. Powell said the camp _ established in a Kurdish area of Iraq, but with the approval of Baghdad officials _ teaches trainees how to use deadly poisons like ricin.

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Powell said the captured assassin who carried out the murder of American Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October received money and weapons for that attack from Zarqawi.